Fatal Distraction Page 3

  What was going on?

  Jess turned the question back on the governor. “I take it you don’t think so?” She was almost shouting to be heard over the protesters’ racket.

  “I’ve worked within the legal system my entire career,” said Sullivan, looking directly into the camera, “and I believe in it, even though the system is not infallible. But the older I get, the more I understand that we don’t know everything. Crystal balls are rare. We don’t see all the nuances. We make mistakes, some impossible to correct, for which we can never atone. We can’t bring people back to life.” Sullivan glanced down a moment, but quickly returned her steady gaze toward Jess, who had all but gasped.

  Emboldened by Sullivan’s candor, Jess pressed harder: “Tell us why you’re going out of your way, then, to ensure Tommy Taylor is executed before you leave office, Governor.”

  Although her run for the U.S. Senate hadn’t been confirmed, speculation had been rampant for weeks that Sullivan would declare her candidacy tonight. Everybody knew she had the full weight of the party machine behind her. Helen Sullivan was the people’s politician. Voters in this state loved her, perhaps more so since her son was killed and she’d continued to serve selflessly, but it seemed foolhardy to test that devotion when she didn’t need to.

  Again Jess wondered what made this woman tick. Why? She jotted on her pad.

  Sullivan’s straight posture and squared shoulders projected strength, invulnerability. If Jess’s question angered her, she gave no outward indication but simply nodded again.

  “Fair question. If Governors made the decisions of office based only on our personal opinions, the job would be too hard, Jess. No decent human being could survive the weight. We’re not God. The people didn’t elect me to substitute my own judgments for the laws on the books. I promised I would follow the law because it’s the right thing to do, and—” her breath caught momentarily “—it’s the only way I can carry the load.”

  “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  The crowd seemed to be directly outside the window, on the lawn. But Jess knew that was impossible. Security would have stopped the protestors long before that point. Manson must have some sort of amplification system set loud enough to deafen them. The volume pulsed stronger than a rock concert. Jess could feel the vibrations as voices shouted, “DNA. DNA. DNA.”

  Jess kept her tone raised to be heard over the din. “Are you saying governing isn’t a matter of individual conscience?” As Jess awaited the governor’s answer, she lowered her eyes to avoid the naked pain in Helen Sullivan’s gaze.

  “To answer you simply, Jess,” said Helen, “those who govern must abide by the law. Despite our best efforts, humans sometimes make mistakes in its application. That is what I would change if I could.”

  Helen glanced toward Agent Temple, perhaps concerned about the rising volume of the protesters, before she continued. “But the law is all we have to separate us from the criminals. I intend to enforce the law of the State of Florida as long as I have the job. That’s exactly what I have done and will do until my term ends next week. I have to. It’s who I am: a woman who does the job she’s elected to do, whether she likes it or not. In the end, that’s all I have to offer.”

  Governor Sullivan’s last words were almost lost in the deafening explosion that seemed to shake the entire room. As the floor vibrated, the walls moved, and a heavy picture fell onto the floor, breaking its frame and glass into pieces.

  Agent Temple rushed toward Sullivan, simultaneously pulling out his service weapon. He grabbed the Governor’s arm and almost lifted her from the chair, pushing her in front of him toward her inner chamber. He opened the door, pushed her into the room, and swept inside behind her.

  Jess squeezed the arms of her chair until it stopped rocking, then she knelt on the floor next to Mike, her photographer. He’d fallen and the skin over his eye was bleeding where the camera’s viewfinder had struck him during the explosion. A rivulet of blood trickled down the right side of his face.

  In the deafening quiet, she asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” he said. He wiped the blood off with his hand, glanced at it, then looked around the room at the chaos. “But what the hell was that?”

  Chapter Two

  Tallahassee, Florida

  Thursday 4:45 p.m.

  JESS HUNKERED DOWN A few moments longer in case more explosions followed the first. An unnatural quiet still enveloped the room; Governor Sullivan and Frank Temple were nowhere to be seen. When no security or other personnel arrived Jess wondered why not but she didn’t know what had happened or what the protocol was for handling the situation.

  She looked over at Mike. Despite the bloody cut, her young photographer didn’t seem to be in shock. No vomiting, trembling or obvious sweating.

  “Nothing broken, right?” she asked.

  Mike patted himself down checking for shattered bones. If he had any fractures, he wouldn’t have to look so hard to find them, she knew, but she waited patiently while he ensured that he remained in one piece. Under different circumstances, she might have laughed. Just now it wasn’t funny.

  “Nope. I’m good to go.” His words were full of bravado, but his tone was shaky. Mike was a newbie, maybe a year or two out of school. She guessed he was some staffer’s kid brother or something. She’d known he was just a beginner when she brought him out for this interview, but she hadn’t expected to need a more experienced photographer for a glossy-magazine assignment like this.

  She reached down to help Mike stand. “Come on. This is the fastest way out.”

  She opened the door to the secretary’s office and trotted quickly into the hallway, then the foyer, and finally to the front entrance of the building and out the door of the Governor’s Mansion. Mike’s heavy footfalls pounded behind her until she stopped abruptly and he bumped into her back.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  Mike raised his camera to his injured right eye and began to video the chaos around them. The Capitol Police had begun to take control of the scene and more law enforcement personnel poured from the building.

  The Greek Revival style mansion was intact, its six tall Corinthian columns remained upright, majestically guarding the front entrance to the Governor’s residence. But the red brick pillars at the gate leading from the park across the street and the black wrought iron fencing separating the park from the building’s lawn had been demolished. Twisted ironwork and broken bricks had fallen everywhere.

  The bronze sculpture of five children and a dog playing follow-the-leader had blown apart. Pieces of the sculpture rested entwined with sections of a white truck which lay in the midst of fire licking the live oak trees clean of their Spanish moss, leaves, and bark. The noxious smoke burned Jess’s nose; she raised her arm and breathed through her sweater.

  Sirens grew louder as the fire trucks and other emergency vehicles arrived. In vain, Jess scanned the scene for David Manson. Several injured protesters lay around the wreckage at the center of the park. She ran to the first victim and did her best to render first aid until the paramedics took over.

  Within thirty minutes, reporters were everywhere, holding microphones, running cameras and Florida television news programs had video of the explosion on the air. Jess stood near the young NBC television reporter, listening to the story as he’d gathered it thus far.

  The pick-up truck was a white Ford 150. Based on almost nothing Jess could discern, the reporter said its bed had been filled with an explosive mixture of fertilizer and nitro methane using a recipe easily available on the Internet. The driver was photographed attempting to bail out of the front seat at the last minute. Maybe he’d miscalculated the instability of his two-minute fuse. When the bomb exploded prematurely, he was ripped in half; the left half of his body landed on the lawn of the Governor’s Mansion and was buried in rubble from the destroyed entrance pillars while the right half roasted in the fire.

  The NBC reporter identified for viewers the owner of
the truck: a father of four, name was withheld pending notification of the family.

  “Why on earth would a father of four children do something like this?” Jess muttered aloud. She was startled to hear her words repeated verbatim by the young reporter, who signed off with the question, handing the story back to the anchors in the studio.

  Jess approached the reporter with her hand extended, presenting a business card. He took the card, glanced down to read it, then back at Jess. He pushed the card into his shirt pocket and extended his hand. “Hayden Smith. Good to meet you. I’m a fan of your work.”

  Fan or not, Jess appreciated his attempt to establish a friendly rapport. She still felt jarred by the explosion. The surreal scene before her was almost like watching a movie with uniformed personnel pouring on from an unseen troop transport.

  “Thanks. Could you let me know the driver’s name?”

  He glanced down at his notes. “Unconfirmed. But the truck belonged to the driver, we think. My news desk says it was a guy named Arnold Ward.”

  Jess gasped involuntarily.

  “You know who he was?”

  “No,” she lied, thinking, Vivian will be devastated. Major details ran quickly through her mind. Arnold Ward was the father of two of Tommy Taylor’s victims. Murders three and four. The boys had been eight and ten when Taylor abducted, tortured, and killed them. He was never tried for those murders because the small-town police from Dentonville, a crossroads hamlet near Ocala where the Wards lived, had made a number of errors collecting the evidence against Taylor. The prosecutor had decided not to take the cases to trial because all of the evidence that would have convicted Taylor was excluded. A much younger Helen Sullivan was a junior member of the prosecutor’s team then, too, Jess remembered, a connection not mentioned during their aborted interview.

  Arnold Ward had made it his life’s mission to secure Tommy Taylor’s execution. Jess had met and interviewed him and his wife Vivian several times in the past four months as she worked on the Tommy Taylor story. Of course, a father of two murdered sons could be driven to a desperate act like this, aimed perhaps at David Manson and those who sought to save Taylor from his appointment with lethal injection.

  But Jess had found Arnold to be a reasonable man, driven to ensure justice for his sons, but not crazy. At least, he hadn’t appeared so when she’d seen him last. But his actions here seemed those of a man driven insane by rage.

  “How many people died today?” Jess asked Hayden.

  “It looks like the driver, Ward if it was him, is the only fatality. They’re telling us they’ve got about ten folks injured, but no report on their condition from the hospital yet.”

  “Thank god. What about David Manson?”

  Hayden lowered his eyes and consulted his notes, as if he didn’t know who Manson was or why she’d bring up his name. Jess recognized the stalling tactic. She’d used it herself many times.

  “He’s not on the injured list,” Hayden finally offered.

  Jess took that to mean that Hayden knew where Manson was and most likely he was somewhere being interviewed right now, either by the authorities or, more likely, for a news story.

  “Are you willing to give us a few moments of interview time yourself?” Hayden asked, signaling for his camera man. “Analysis, maybe? You covered this story from the start.”

  “Maybe in a couple of days, when we know a bit more about what’s going on here. None of this makes any sense to me.”

  “Amen, sister,” Hayden said, dismissing his photographer with a shake of his head.

  “Thanks for understanding. I’ll call you if I have a comment I can make.”

  “Works for me. I’ll hold you to it.”

  “Do that.” She turned to find Mike, then stepped back with one more question of her own. “How long will it take to notify the family?”

  Jess wondered how the authorities would investigate the explosion. Law enforcement had already mobilized, but Jess needed to make sense of the situation for herself and Vivian Ward was the place to start.

  She glanced at her watch. It was almost full dark now. If she drove like a maniac, she could make it before the time Vivian’s shift at the local diner normally began. Vivian had already suffered enough heartache in her life. Families of violent crime victims, and particularly those whose children have been murdered, often suffered serious, long-term psychological problems. The moment they first learned of the death typically became their own traumatic experience, often relived over and over.

  Jess wanted to spare Vivian that extra harm if she could. She could break the news more gently than a stranger would, and while doing so maybe find out what had driven Arnold to this inexplicable madness. She and Vivian had developed a strong rapport previously. Then again, that was before her husband blew himself up.

  Hayden shrugged. “Hard to say. They’ll want to be sure it was him first. Get a positive identification somehow. Maybe figure the motive? Then they’ll have to find the next of kin. Could be a few minutes to a few days, I guess. I’ve seen it go either way.”

  Jess nodded. In addition, law enforcement would want to know whether Vivian was involved. And so did Jess. Plus, she had an advantage over everyone else. She knew exactly where to find Vivian Ward.

  Walking in Mike’s direction, she mouthed “Let’s go,” gesturing toward the SUV she’d been driving around Florida for the past four months.

  She trotted toward the vehicle and started up while Mike stashed his camera in the back seat. As soon as he’d clicked his seatbelt, she punched the gas and flipped on the radar detector, determined to shave their travel time as close as possible.

  As the miles sped by and Jess’s heart-rate returned to normal, a gnawing sense of regret grew inside her. On a normal night, Jess would have spent the early evening performing the tasks she’d developed to search for Peter, efforts more symbolic than practical, she knew, but designed to keep hope alive in the face of dismal statistics.

  Twice a day Jess checked her tip lines and reviewed the various internet sites that posted new information on abducted children. Once a month she followed up with the law enforcement agencies that had given up on Peter long ago. Today, Thursday, was normally the day when she called the four private investigators she’d hired in different regions of the country, but she didn’t want to do any that in front of Mike.

  These rituals, despite the lack of any real success, kept Jess sane, enabling her to believe that she was doing her best to find Peter. She never skipped “Peter time,” but tonight would have to be an exception. It couldn’t be helped, but she felt guilty anyway.

  Tomorrow morning she could make up for it, complete tonight’s tasks. A few hours’ delay wouldn’t make any difference after all these years. The plan eased her anxiety for the moment.

  She hummed an old show tune that reminded her most of Peter, another of the tools she used to remember, to keep Peter alive. If she had been alone in the car, she’d have talked to Peter, too.

  Finally, as she sped down the road, she composed a list of questions for Vivian Ward—and prayed that she’d arrive in time.

  Chapter Three

  Tallahassee, Florida

  Thursday 7:45 p.m.

  HELEN GLANCED AROUND THE tastefully appointed hotel suite while she waited for party chairman Ralph Hayes, a man she’d met several times before and didn’t particularly like. She smoothed her gown over her crossed legs and folded her hands in her lap. The dress draped from a modest jewel neckline to the floor and covered her arms in slim long sleeves of metallic turquoise.

  At her throat hung the double strand of her mother’s pearls that she wore with everything. They had become her symbol of pragmatic consistency, of continuity. Her dress, her entire appearance, declared “traditional, disciplined, experienced leader,” which was exactly what she was, and precisely what she conveyed. And the prime reason that her party wanted her to run for the U.S. Senate.

  The aroma of Ralph’s expensive cigar preceded his entry.
“Helen, please forgive me for making you wait. He leaned forward to shake her hand and then settled across from her in another overstuffed chair. “What have you found out about the explosion? Anything?”

  After the abrupt ending to her interview with Jess Kimball, the Capitol Police assumed control of the situation. Firefighters extinguished the blaze and crews had begun what would be a long-term repair and reconstruction of the extensive damage to the park across from the mansion and the surrounding area.

  “FDLE thinks the driver was Arnold Ward.”

  “Did you know him?” Ralph asked, between puffs. He seemed only mildly interested in the motives of a madman. She sensed he had more important matters to discuss about their planned announcement of her candidacy tonight.

  “Apparently not as well as I thought, based on what he did today. I’d met him several times over the past twenty years. He was a long-haul trucker for one of the phosphate companies operating in the middle of the state.” Helen didn’t mention that Arnold Ward was survived by a wife and only two children now. Two adult daughters.

  The sleeves of Ralph’s blue dress shirt were rolled to reveal thick forearms, his pricey tie loosened at the neck. He sported a full head of Ronald Reagan hair that was probably colored to keep its deep brown luster. He looked every inch the Washington power-broker, poised to thrust her career skyward.

  He gestured toward her with a decanter half-full of brown liquid. “Scotch?” When she declined, he poured himself a glass and sipped. “Did he not like you or something? Anything we need to worry about?”

  “He liked me, although we were never able to prosecute Tommy Taylor for killing his two sons. Why he’d snap now, and like this? I honestly don’t know.” Grief caused by murder did not follow a predictable pattern.